Chapter 33
AFTER NATE HAD FINISHED telling them about Julia’s miscarriage and how he had eventually taken her to Santa Monica, he pulled his keys from his pocket and held them out, a peace offering.
A command? “I’d take you myself,” he said.
“But I don’t want to leave Mal again. You two take my truck and go find her. ”
“You really think she’s in Santa Monica now, at this… Ocean Inn?” Emily asked, skeptical. Her mind was still reeling from everything Nate had just told them, mostly that Julia had had a scary miscarriage so many years earlier that she’d never mentioned to her sisters.
Nate nodded. “You know Jules. She likes to finish everything. Perfect circles. No loose ends.”
“But back then she must’ve been struggling so much after just losing a baby.” Nora’s voice faltered. “It’s thirteen years later? Why now?”
Emily nodded, suddenly realizing that Nate was actually making a lot of sense.
That maybe Nate had always understood Julia better than she and Nora had.
“Veronica just moved out. She and Ted are getting divorced. She’s unmoored now.
She’s probably spiraling. It sounds like she was spiraling back in 2006 too. But now, maybe she’s even worse?”
Even though Nora was still steaming mad about being the only one who didn’t know about their mother, her stomach suddenly hurt thinking about the fact that she hadn’t spoken to Julia in a whole year.
If Julia had gone and done something like this, not according to her plan, she must be in really bad shape.
Emily had talked and texted with Julia from time to time over the past year, but it was casual exchanges, random bird pictures.
She’d been too wrapped up in the mess she’d made of her own life to realize Julia had been in a mess too.
She felt guilt rise in her throat, bitter, acidic.
How was it she’d had no idea what was really going on with her older sister? Thirteen years ago, or now.
Nora snatched the keys from Nate’s hand and then handed them to Emily. “You drive,” she said.
“Why me?” Emily frowned.
“I’m a freaking New Yorker. I haven’t driven a car in at least five years.”
Even though Emily drove a Prius at home, and the thought of driving Nate’s giant truck on the eight-lane California freeways terrified her, she took the keys.
Emily and Nora drove up I-5 toward LA in silence.
Emily gripped the steering wheel tightly, driving too slow in the farthest-right lane up the coast—through and out of San Diego, Carlsbad, past Camp Pendleton, through Orange County and Long Beach—and once they hit the bumper-to-bumper traffic of south LA, Emily felt so nauseous, it took everything she had not to throw up.
She suddenly thought about the last time she’d been in Santa Monica, running into Cara at the pier.
And now the irony hit her—that she had inadvertently driven to where Cara lived, after promising Cee that she would never see her again.
What if Cee checked Find My right now and saw where Emily was? What would she think?
Nora interrupted her thoughts as she gave Emily directions to the Ocean Inn from her phone. Siri directed them the last hellish few miles, through the beach traffic of Memorial Day. If Julia was here and safe, Emily thought as she finally awkwardly parked the truck, she might just kill her herself.